Defining Default

Excerpt

“Even though you are picking and choosing who to pay, you’re defaulting toward someone,” Josh Gordon of the Concord Coalition — a nonpartisan organization founded by former Nixon economic adviser Peter G. “Pete” Petersen — told us by phone. “It might not be a bond market default, but you are still becoming a deadbeat on your bills. You are breaking the faith in the government to pay its bills. As far as the market is concerned, it’s the same as defaulting on bond interest.”